Sometimes there are these really huge events that you don't know
were events until later, when you're trying to figure out why everyone
-- why you're all screwed up. And when you do figure it out,
it can be. Kind of shaming. Like stealing from your mother and having
her love you anyway, because it was only a little money, and it's
not like you're a bad kid.

But, whatever, that's not the thing. The thing was that Doctor Henry
McCoy came to the school to lend his super-powered brain to some thing
or another that Xavier thought we were all too young to know about.
The thing was that he was blue. And furry. Like, all over furry.

Like a really, really big teddy bear. With fangs. And glasses. And
blue underwear.

Which was hey, you know, he's a mutant. We're allowed to dress weird,
I think it may be in the rule book that we have to dress weird.
C'mon, how much leather does one super-mutant team really need to
wear?

Anyway, he gave a little speech with a lot of words I got Rogue to
look up for me, and then 'retired to the serene comfort of his laboratory.'
Right. We all ate dinner, tried to use enough big words to imitate
him. Johnny carbonized my chicken leg. I froze his mashed potatoes.
Everything was a little off, but whatever, Scott had given us 40
algebra problems to work out for Thursday. I know I was worried.

So Johnny and I wound up playing foosball for two hours and listening
to the approximately 9 billion commercials on MTV and maybe two videos
and then I settled in to do my homework, fell asleep in the middle,
woke up at four a.m. with highlighter ink all over my face and pillow
and I don't even remember using a highlighter and I thought:

He's furry.

Really, really furry. Like, he'd feel like my dog if I were
to pet him. Which was just a weird thought all around and Allerdyce
was snoring so loud I couldn't get back to sleep and the ink wouldn't
scrub off and I thought:

All of us look human.

And we do. The most non-human (and I know we're all human, and it's
the worst thing ever that Magneto agrees with all the bigots that
we're a separate species, but no one ever made me feel particularly
human after I put Mrs. Gilbert in the hospital with frostbite in the
middle of July) thing about us is probably Scott, with those wrap-around
shades of his.

Even at that point, the X-Men just sort of look like some kind of
Eurotrash pop band.

Which brought up this image of Scott angsting over a mic and sort
of swaying like a twig in a low breeze and Jean telekinetically bopping
herself all over the stage playing the guitar and Storm doing back-up
vocals behind the keyboard and Wolverine hanging himself behind the
drum kit. Several times. All that healing.

It was really, really late, and I kind of half-thought that
all the (ugly) mutants were the ones doing horrible things and Giving
The Rest (Best) of Us A Bad Name and it felt. Really ugly.

But I finally got to sleep, and I got C's on everything that came
back and handed in my future C's and played around in Storm's science
class and got sent to Xavier who just sort of looked at me and said:

"Why don't you talk to him?"

And sent me out of there with a sudden, vague sense of where the
Laboratory of Serenity might be, and my own thoughts about whether
you could get to the Fortress of Solitude from there, and if Dr. McCoy
and Clark Kent got their underoos from the same place and how much
force it would take to turn the hall into a skating rink and what
Rogue tasted like just under her ear.

Since she probably remembered to wash there. Girls always did.

So then I was thinking that it was kind of weirdly adult to think
about tasting a girl, as opposed to touching her or, well,
groping and doing her, which was weird, but also kind of cool.
And hot. Because Bobby Junior was up and awake and Jesus what
if McCoy could smell that kind of thing?

I stood outside the door for a while, debating about attempting to
deep- freeze the little guy and the wet spot that would undoubtedly
be all over my crotch and also *owww*. Which helped. But the
door was already open by the time I was ready to knock and I was staring
into the face of Dr. McCoy.

Upside down. With a book. And little glasses.

"Ah, a visitor to my home away from home. Please come in, young friend,
and breathe deep the many odors of science!"

"Um. OK." Science, for the record, smelled a lot like the disinfectant
that Jean uses in her own Labora -- her own lab. Which wasn't
as capitalized as this place felt. "Wow," I said, attempting... well,
I don't know what I was attempting. "You sure have a lot of. Stuff."

And suddenly I was the Beav's retarded younger cousin. Great start.
All set to aim my deep thoughts at Big, Blue, and Fangsome. Sure.
Right.

"Ah, the Professor has been most generous with the loan of his equipment.
This, my friend, is a pocket cathedral where science can be most properly
worshipped."

"So you're an atheist?"

I wanted to go hide in a test tube.

"Rather a controversial choice for a question between people who
haven't even been properly introduced, don't you think?"

I think I was beet red. "I'm Bobby. Ah. Drake and look, I didn't
... that is, you don't..."

"Bobby Drake, it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Henry McCoy,
but I tend to prefer Beast. Or Hank. And I am an agnostic."

We shook hands, and it was exactly like shaking hands with a big,
blue, furry guy would feel like. Ticklish, weird, and a little scary.
I smiled, though, and he returned it with a grin of his own. All those
big, white teeth. I should've been thinking about Sabretooth, or Wolverine
for that matter, but his eyes crinkled up in this weirdly young
way when he smiled and so we just grinned at each other like idiots.

"What exactly does agnostic mean? I mean, I know it's kind of somewhere
in the middle, but..." At least I was an idiot.

"I could give you any number of definitions, but I think the one
that means the most in regards to me is this: An agnostic will spend
his life studying every aspect of a duck before coming to the conclusion
that it may, possibly, be a duck. Possibly."

"Do you spend a lot of time studying God?"

Beast jumped down off the ceiling and pulled out chairs for us to
sit on, looking thoughtful for long minutes. I wasn't sure what to
call him. He'd given me too many choices, and wasn't thinking of him
as 'Beast' automatically making him different? What was I doing here,
again?

"...my youth wondering about the sort of God who could make the world
we live in, and I asked dozens of questions of dozens of people who
believed, and people who did not, and I watched humanity changing
and growing and shifting as mutations became more common, and ...
then I decided I was an agnostic. Which at that point was my way of
saying 'I haven't the faintest idea of what might be going on in the
universe, and my head hurts.'"

"I wish I could get away with that with algebra."

"It takes practice, Bobby. Of course, it still won't work on Professor
Summers, but practice is rarely ever a bad idea."

"Got it."

There was a pause, and Beast ran a claw over the book he'd been reading,
sort of half-smiling in my direction, as if it was perfectly normal
for the class idiot to show up and ask him about God of all
things and I knew I was starting to blush, and I wanted to run for
it, but I finally managed to get it out: "What's it like to. Um. Look
like that?"

"Do you think the facial fur detracts from the natural sharpness
of my cheekbones? Is blue really my color?"

"I ... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, I mean, I didn't mean --"

"It's all right, Bobby. No, don't apologize. I fear I've grown far
too accustomed to being rather ... flip with my responses to that
sort of question, over the years."

"It's just ... I'm not used to seeing many other. Ah. Mutants."

"Yes, Professor Xavier has made himself quite the closed society
with the school, I think. I doubt that was his intention, but these
things do happen ... Only human nature, after all. Like calls to like,
and rarely to ... unlike."

"I don't think you're ... unlike. Well, you are, but that's your
vocabulary. And everything you know, I guess, but Jean does, too,
and man you have no idea how much I hate babbling."

"Your 'babble' is far more entertaining than what many people call
conversation, Bobby. I'm enjoying our visit."

Which was, yeah, a big surprise, but it was nice, because
I was, too. It was like ... one of those moments. Like watching the
look on Rogue's face the first time I ever gave her one of my little
ice sculptures. That kind of wonder and ... warmth. I had this painful
urge to ask Beast if we could be Best Friends.

Christ, yeah, and maybe make a friggin' soap box racer while
we were at it. Definitely weird, but also definitely that feeling.

"Bobby ... to answer your question ... well, it's a mass of contradictions,
really. On the one hand, there's a lot of room for freedom when meeting
a new person and not ever having to dread the inevitable conversation
about one's mutation. On the other ... well, there was comfort in
being able to hide. When I was able."

I could only think to nod. Wonder about what it would be like to
go back out in the world and just be Bobby Drake, Mutie Freak again.
Of course, with control of my powers, no one would really have to
know, but then they also would if I wanted to have anything like a
friendship and so I basically just sat there, probably with
my Deep In Thought face, which looks way too much like my Village
Idiot face for comfort.

In the end, all I could manage was to thank him for answering me,
about a minute before realizing I was already late for training with
Storm and if that wasn't gonna be a painful experience...

"Um. I gotta go. To class. Storm is ... well, she's helping me learn
how to control my powers."

Beast stood and smiled, that crinkly one again and I wiped my palm
on my jeans and wondered if we were supposed to shake again. Beast
chuckled a little and bowed me out, with perfect grace. I wondered
what his fur felt like.